High Lift Pallet Truck Saved Our Book Shop

This is a guest article from Lindsey Smith, who works as the head administrator for an onsite book shop at Durham University in the United Kingdom. This is her interesting story of how an old high lift pallet truck saved us one morning when the delivery drivers truck failed and left all of our stock for the semester high and dry. It may not sound like a big deal, but this delivery was literally all of our new books that were needed by hundreds of students starting that academic year. Without further ado, let’s get into the story.

The High Lift Pallet Truck Story

In order to fully appreciate the gravity of this story, let me set the scene for you. It was a crisp autumn morning, and the start of an all new academic year here at Durham University. We had just about made it through freshers week alive, and now it was work time for hundreds of new students joining the ranks at the University. It was an exciting time, and a confusing time, as lots of lost students stumbled around trying to find their way to classes and acquire everything they need. I work in the book shop, which is usually pretty quiet during the first few weeks of the semester. This very quickly changes about 2 or 3 weeks in, when all the students seem to descend all at once, looking for all manner of books, notepads, pens and everything in between. Well, this morning we were getting our big book delivery of the year, and it was all going well, until the drivers high lift pallet truck, a specialist piece of equipment that they use to load and unload items, broke midway through unloading.

What Happened Next

So there we all are, scratching our heads and wondering what can be done about this large pallet load of heavy books that was impossible to move by hand. It was stuck on the unload ramp of the truck, and at first we contemplated just unloading each book by hand. This would take hours, and the driver had a schedule to keep, and said that he might have to take the load away and come back another day. This would drastically upset all of our students and staff that were dependent on these learning resources to get their grades. Luckily one of the custodians suddenly had a quiet think to himself, before hurrying off to the store room at the back of the university.

We Were in Luck

When he emerged, he was wheeling behind him exactly what we needed, a small and dusty old pallet truck. Great we all thought, but as these things usually go, it was not quite as simple as that. The old machine hadn’t been used in years, and had to be stripped down and greased before it would actually work. By this time the driver was getting very impatient, as he had been stuck here for over an hour. But, as luck would have, the old pallet truck was able to get the load down from the truck safely, which was a great result for everyone.